


thread

by honeybatts



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Drabble, Guilt, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Unrequited Crush, twin links
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:59:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15690504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybatts/pseuds/honeybatts
Summary: rute has a crush and he cannot stand it.





	thread

* * *

        he cant get the song out of his head.  
        it haunts him--it might as well, honestly--to the point where he catches himself humming it under his breath while picking herbs or cooking, idly waiting for the night to pass, while sewing up the patches in his and Ayhe's clothes. it follows him, lingers in the back of his mind, becomes the background noise to dreams. it's--it's bad, awful even, and seeing his brother's flickering, barely illuminated face smiling back at him when he hears the familiar tune from across the cooking pot only makes it worse. it's the knowing smile and the sharp eyes. because he knew. it's the same thing Rute had teased him mercilessly about whenever they were even remotely near the Zora Domain--and now that the tables had turned, he knows Ayhe won't let him go unscathed. it would be deserved, were it not for one thing:  
        the fact that it's just so fucking pathetic.  
        it'd be deserved if it were, uh, Beedle, or maybe Paya, or some traveler that Rute had become infatuated with, one that they only ever met on the road and that Rute swooned in front of every time they passed, but it wasn't. it was so pathetic that Rute barely wants to think his name, when he can help it--it's the guilt of it, the shame, the audacity to have a melody dancing in his head while his heart fluttered to every lilt, every delicate sliding note, when he knows by whose hand is making it; when he's seen the daughters and the lonely wife. and were that not enough, it's the guilt of 100 years upon his shoulders, who he was those years ago and the people who knew him--loved him?--then. what they would think. how unfair it'd be, that they died trapped in machines and loving him, and he was alive, still, and yearning for another--and it's not just that, no, because it never seems to be just that, but it's the thought of a lonely princess fighting in a castle against a beast he could not protect her from, the failure of it, the devotion she has that he seems to lack. because he, he didn't want to find the memories. he didn't even want to remember. what mattered to him was that they were alive, and together, and it was fun. how irresponsible. how wretched. what kind of knight was he, that once awoken, he'd be happier shirking his duties and catching bugs and riding deer than complete the job that laid unfinished for a century, laid waste to the entire land. how selfish.  
        and, he guessed, that was the thing--Rute never stopped being selfish, in all matters of life. he never stopped wanting to forget himself, forget the Knight Who Was, to run away and be something else, something new and entirely different. and this infatuation--because that's what it was, he was sure (because the thought of it being anything else terrifies him)--was just another gear in this fucked up cog, another selfish act, because he was married, and a father to five lovely girls, and Kass--  
        goddess. Kass.  
        it keeps him up at night. long after the fire has gone out. long after the stable-hands themselves retire. long after the moon rises, he lies awake in his bed, hands folded on his stomach and eyes staring up into the pitched ceiling, he swears that, on the edge of his hearing, he can hear the familiar bellow of the accordion and he can only entertain the thought for so long before his stomach turns under his hands and disgust settles into his veins like poison. there's nothing to be done about it--he knows it--just to push it down and let it ebb away on it's own, to let it lay, untouched, for however long it takes. Kass has his wife--and Ahye, inevitably, will have Sideon--which just leaves... Rute. alone. maybe--maybe it was fate. penitence, even, for all the times his stomach dropped whenever things seemed familiar. maybe the goddess Hylia was watching them, and manipulated the strings of their lives for this to happen, for his brother to be tied to another and for his own--his crush? his "object of affection"?--to be tied to another, and for Rute's thread to dangle. forgotten. maybe like it should have been.

**Author's Note:**

> a late night drabble frm when my gf and i got into botw! rute and ayhe (my gfs link) are twin brothers, who are both equally anxious about their fate as the Hero when there seems to be only ever one. ayhe has a HUGE ass crush on sideon, while rute is just.... hopeless. :') (he gets better)


End file.
